- Howard Matz
A. Howard Matz (born 1943) is an American lawyer and
judge . He has sat on theUnited States District Court for the Central District of California since 1998.Career
Matz was born in
Brooklyn , New York. He received hisBachelor of Arts degree fromColumbia University in 1965 and his J.D. fromHarvard Law School in 1968. Matz clerked for JudgeMorris E. Lasker of theUnited States District Court for the Southern District of New York . He was in private practice inNew York City from 1969 to 1970.Matz moved in
California and was in private practice in Los Angeles withHughes Hubbard & Reed from 1972 to 1974. He served as Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California from 1974 to 1978, and was chief of the Special Prosecutions Unit from 1977 to 1978, when he left the Attorney General's office to return to Hughes Hubbard as apartner .President
Bill Clinton nominated Matz to the United States District Court for the Central District of California on October 20, 1997, to a seat vacated byHarry L. Hupp .He was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on June 26, 1998 and received commission three days later.
Famous rulings
* After nearly four decades of experience in the law, Howard Matz found himself embroiled in international controversy over the treatment of
Taliban andAl Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay'sCamp X-Ray . Judge Matz presided over the first legal challenge to the United States Government's treatment of those prisoners, in a petition brought by acivil rights group seekinghabeas corpus for 158 "detainees." Judge Matz dismissed the petition on the grounds that United States courts do not have jurisdiction over the Cuban base where detainees are held and that the petitioners lacked standing since they had no "significant relationship" with the prisoners. In his ruling, Judge Matz emphasized that "nothing in this ruling suggests that the captives are entitled to no legal protection whatsoever."
*Matz was the judge in the copyright law case "Perfect 10 v. Google, Inc. ". In the case, "Perfect 10 " suedGoogle for making digitally available copyrighted content that it owned in the form of thumbnail-sized reproductions as part of Google'sGoogle Books initiative. Matz rejected Google'sfair use claim, which marked a reversal from the "Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation " case.External links
* [http://www.cacd.uscourts.gov/CACD/JudgeReq.nsf/2fb080863c88ab47882567c9007fa070/2eff62212b7ed88b8825681d007fa030?OpenDocument Judge's Procedures and Schedules]
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